Faults on Both Sides: Incorrect Allegations Concerning Impressment

Faults of the Federalists (continued)

6.  Incorrect Allegations Concerning Impressment

When Britain went to war with France in 1793, the British Navy had 16,600 sailors.  As the war continued demand for seamen increased.  By 1797, the number of sailors in the British Navy had ballooned to 119,000.  It remained at that level for the next ten years.   The Navy lost about 12,000 sailors each year to death, disease and desertion.  The Navy, with low wages and harsh discipline, competed with the British merchant marine for sailors.  Demand for sailors was double the supply of available Englishmen.[1]

Desperate but dominant, the British Navy flagrantly ignored the rights of men on land and at sea.  British naval thugs called “press gangs” boarded ships and hunted down victims on the streets, on wharves and in taverns.  Armed with clubs, and ready to use their fists, they impressed men against their will to serve in the British Navy.[2]  French privateers fought back, plundering British merchant ships.  British insurers became reluctant to write policies for ships in their nation’s merchant marine.

Americans exploited the opportunity.  They became the largest carriers of maritime trade in the Atlantic.  New England and New York led the way.   American shipping, measured in tonnage, dramatically increased from 558,000 tons in 1802 to 981,000 tons in 1811.[3]

American merchants also needed sailors.  Their trade was profitable.  They paid handsome wages in better working conditions than those of the British Navy.  Those reasons enticed British sailors to desert.[4]   From 1803 to 1811, the British impressed an estimated 10,000 naturalized or American sailors to fight the Napoleonic wars.[5]

Federalist writers alleged Jefferson’s malice toward Britain caused the impressments.   They claimed that impressment was “incalculably exaggerated by him and his successor” James Madison.   Carey wrote “hundreds of thousands” had been deceived by these false accusations.   Carey reprinted three extracts from documents written by Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Pinckney, minister in London, protesting the impressments in 1792.  More extracts dated before 1800 proved the United States had protested impressment long before Jefferson became president in 1801.

Carey printed an extract of a letter written by Rufus King, America’s diplomatic representative in London.  The letter explained his negotiations with British officials to stop impressments.  It was written in 1803.  Following those negotiations the British agreed to stop impressments on the high seas, but not in British waters.  According to Carey, King rejected the proposal.  Carey argued that King should have accepted it.  He found fault with King and the Federalists for criticizing President Madison on impressments, when they could have saved American sailors from impressment on the high seas.

At first the Federalists protested impressment.  By 1812, however,  they opposed war with Great Britain, even though America declared war because of impressment.  Carey had the extracts to prove it.  Carey noted that the Federalists sent resolutions to Congress in 1805 and 1806.  He included extracts from two memorials of New York merchants and one from New Haven.  He included an extract from William Cobbett, a former newspaper editor in Philadelphia.   Cobbett supported the British and was Carey’s former adversary.  Cobbett returned to Britain and wrote:  “But let not men be seized …upon the high seas (and sometimes at the mouth of her own rivers) where there is nobody to judge…and where the British officer…is at once ACCUSER, WITNESS, JUDGE, and CAPTOR.”[6]

Next, Carey played on the sympathies of his readers, including extracts of testimony by seamen who had been impressed.[7]

By 1813, Rufus King, now a senator from New York, had changed his mind.  Carey reprinted an extract of a letter from Jonathan Russell, another diplomatic representative in London to James Monroe, secretary of state, dated September 16, 1812.  The letter summarized a conversation with Lord Castlereagh, the British foreign secretary.    Russell wrote that Federalists in Congress blamed impressment on the “…misconduct of the American government.  This error probably originated with Mr. King.”[8]

Carey included an extract about difficulties of impressed seaman having to fight American vessels at sea.  An extract of a letter to the editor of the Boston Chronicle, without a date, noted Commodore Rodgers had 150 seamen aboard his vessel in Boston harbor.   One hundred twenty of his men had been impressed by the British “at different times.”  Carey included a letter from Commodore Rodgers to the Secretary of the Navy on January 14, 1813, reporting that about one eighth of crews aboard two British vessels were Americans.[9]

Again, Carey appealed to his readers’ emotions with an account of a British captain who allowed his American seaman to go below when his ship engaged an American vessel.  The captain was court martialed for the loss of his ship, because he did not have enough men to fight the Americans.[10]

Carey’s closing argument was that a committee reported to the Massachusetts legislature that in 1812, the beginning of the war, they claimed only eleven Massachusetts men were impressed, and the number of Americans was less than 300.  Carey’s contrasting extracts showed that Federalist newspapers and writers published lies about the continuing impressments.

He included an extract of a letter to James Monroe from James Madison when he was Secretary of State.  The letter clearly shows that Madison was opposed to the injustice of impressment.[11]

Carey thundered, “High-minded American merchants, possessed of immense fortunes…owing these entire manifold blessings to the labours, the skill, and the industry of our sailors—led by party spirit, regard with calm and stone-hearted apathy the miseries of impressment…”[12]

Next:   Did the Federalists Unjustly Criticize Madison Following the Failure of the Erskine Arrangement?  Faults of the Federalists continued.

Look for it Monday, April 22.